Introduction :
Inadequate diagnosis of diseases remains to be among the central limitations of health care systems in many developing countries. Therapeutic rational has it that treatment with quality medication can only unfold its full potential when there is diagnostic evidence that patients are actually suffering from the disease they are treated for. In the last decade we can thus observe a shift of focus in Global Health towards ‘point-of-care’ diagnostic technologies (mainly for HIV, tuberculosis and malaria). In the proposed symposium this shift shall be interrogated analytically and conceptualized as part of a broader socio-technical shift to testing as a newly emerging therapeutic paradigm in Global Health. What has been coined “point-of-care” or “out of the lab into the field” refers to highly mobile and simple to use devices that aim to account not only for lower-skilled health work forces but also is catered directly to poor populations. While this emphasis on diagnosis pays attention to the limited human and financial resources of most of the formal public health care landscape in developing countries, the focus on diagnostics also promises to be more inclusive , responding to the needs and limited financial capacities of the majority of the target populations to access even basic health care services. Furthermore, the devices extend the geographic reach of biomedicine in developing countries by bringing diagnosis into regions with low coverage of formal health facilities. One core strand in R&D as well as implementation programs is concerned with the improvement of usability and mobility of new diagnostic devices particularly in remote areas. The symposium, which we provisionally entitle “Outsourcing the Laboratory” is aimed to provide us with a cutting-edge and prominent framework designed to open-up an interdisciplinary discussion on the effects and impact of point-of-care diagnostics across diseases as well as geographical contexts. Taking into account that most research and discussion on diagnostics centres around prominent infectious diseases like HIV, TB and malaria the symposium encourages a more comprehensive and comparative perspective on the topic. Going beyond this emerging discourse and focus on the ‘big three’ infectious diseases, the symposium’s aim is to better understand the socio-technical and public health implications of this – in scale and scope – unprecedented shift in Global Health. We aim to bring together more empirical depth as well as novel conceptual frameworks that allow us to identify fundamental differences and commonalities across diseases and places. [This symposium builds on and extents the project “Emerging Geographies of Care: The Role of Rapid Diagnostic Tests in Access to Malaria Care” that René Umlauf and Uli Beisel worked on during their stay at the Foundation in August 2013]